Nguyen Van Linh

Nguyen Van Linh (1 July 1915-27 April 1998) was General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam from 18 December 1986 to 28 June 1991, succeeding Truong Chinh and preceding Do Muoi.

Biography
Nguyen Van Linh was born in Hanoi, French Indochina in 1915, and he became active against the French colonial occupation, was imprisoned, and sent to the French penal colony at Con Dao Island from 1930 to 1936 and from 1941 to 1945. A member of the Indochinese Communist Party since 1936, he became its chief organizer in central and south Vietnam, first against the French, and then against the US-backed governments of Ngo Dinh Diem and Nguyen Van Thieu. After the end of the Vietnam War he became head of the party in Ho Chi Minh City, where he introduced a number of unorthodox, but relatively successful, economic policies. As party general secretary and de facto Vietnamese leader he introduced economic reforms while instisting upon the maintenance of the party's political monopoly. He died in 1998 at the age of 82.